Mark Kinver, an environment reporter at BBC News, reports on a review of more than 230 citizen science projects. The authors of the review concluded involvement of volunteers offers “high value to research, policy and practice”. They also published a Guide To Citizen Science offering advice on how to set up a successful citizen science project. The review and guide was commissioned by the UK Environmental Observation Framework (UK-EOF). From the BBC report:

The review reached a number of conclusions about the value of data collected by volunteers: The development of technologies was “revolutionising citizen science”, for example through online recording and smartphone apps; Data quality could be excellent, but was not fully recognised by all researchers or policymakers; It is a cost-effective way of collecting environmental data There was potential to make considerably more use of citizen science that currently was the case.